


Reunion

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: Whole New Vision [6]
Category: Primeval
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-16
Updated: 2009-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 11:49:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3173034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caroline Steel doesn’t feel like she’s in a very strong position at the unofficial crisis meeting. Everyone there is either old enough to make her feel like an infant, young enough to make her feel ancient, experienced enough to make her feel like a newcomer, or someone she double-crossed sixteen years ago – and there are kids *everywhere*.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reunion

            Caroline’s first thought on climbing out of her car was _oh my God, there are children everywhere_. A second look when she’d recovered from her shock assured her that it wasn’t quite as bad as she’d thought – there were, in fact, only about seven children, and most of them didn’t seem to be related. One pair of identical twins with loud Australian accents, three boys she didn’t recognise, an angelic little girl with blonde curly hair somersaulting on the lawn, and one child she was positive she recognised from photographs on Lorraine’s desk and the occasional dinner at her house. Still. Kids, _everywhere_.

 

            Caroline had no children. She’d thought about them briefly five or six years ago, and had come to the conclusion that she was unlikely to find anyone in particular whose babies she wanted, and that – if kids were going to happen – they were going to be the adopted kids of a single mother, so get off my case, Mum. It didn’t surprise her that the anomaly team had bred like bunnies; when the anomalies were active, she was pretty sure they’d been shagging like bunnies, too.

 

            A couple of young women appeared through the front door of the hotel, one tall with short dark hair, a tan and a couple of fingers in plaster, one much smaller with fair hair trapped in a loose bun, and Caroline blinked at them in mild puzzlement. They looked to be around thirty, which meant they had been teenagers when the anomaly project was shut down. Possibly they were new staff?

 

            They spotted her and had a quick conference just out of her hearing range before the blonde went to call to the children and the dark-haired one came over to her, feet in red patent Doc Martens crunching on the gravel. Caroline, whose sense for danger had been hyperactive since Leek’s menagerie, felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. She swallowed a slight anxiety down, and reminded herself that while Sir James might have forgotten to warn any security that she was coming, Lorraine certainly would not have done. She stepped forward.

 

            “Caroline Steel,” she said, extending a hand, head held high and practised smile on her face. “I think I’m expected. I’m a little later than I thought I would be – there was an accident on the M4.”

 

            “Liz Lester,” the woman said, casually shaking her hand with a grip that could crush scrap iron.

 

            Caroline’s jaw dropped. Liz _Lester_? Sir James’ eldest? God Almighty. She knew, rationally speaking, that Liz Lester had been twenty or so when the anomalies were shut down; it only made sense for her to be – oh, Christ, in her early thirties now, a fully paid-up adult, older and probably wiser than Caroline had been at her first brush with the anomalies. Caroline felt absolutely ancient.

 

            “ _Captain_ Liz Lester,” Liz added casually, and grinned a grin that owed a lot to Jon Lyle’s most predatory expressions. “My, how I’ve grown.”

           

***

 

            Caroline allowed herself to be courteously escorted indoors, still in a mild state of shock, by Liz, the blonde woman – she moved like a dancer and Liz looked at her like a star had crashed to earth and was lighting up her back garden, so was quite possibly Juliet Sayers; Caroline had read the famous tell-all book by Mick Harper and had taken part in the lawsuit against it – and a parcel of children. She found the adults inside, cheerfully squashed around several tables pushed together in the hotel’s main dining area; the _Sorry We’re Closed_ sign was hung up on the front door, just before a cheerful antechamber in which wellies, umbrellas and a visitor’s book fought for supremacy. Caroline had been here the previous year to ask Jim and Mary Mitchell a lot of pointed questions about the former Forest of Dean anomaly, and the décor hadn’t changed since; Abby Maitland, however, was looking round and observing out loud that it had changed beyond all recognition, which it probably had since the team were last there.

 

            Caroline hoped that Abby had similarly changed beyond all recognition, or there was about to be a brawl.

 

            Lorraine, who was sitting with her nutcase husband, unsubtly holding hands under the table, turned around and spotted her. “Caroline!” she said warmly, and got up to take her hands, kiss her on both cheeks and make polite small talk. Caroline, clinging onto the one veneer of familiarity this place offered, enthusiastically entered into the small talk and tried not to think about all the differences in the team compared to the one she had known more than ten years ago. They were older, of course (although Abby didn’t look like she was approaching forty at all, the cow, and Stephen Hart was still drop-dead gorgeous – Caroline had suddenly discovered a reason to watch Olympic pentathlon when he started picking up gold medals for Britain) and dressed differently. Sir James essentially looked like he’d allowed his hair to turn grey and a few distinguished wrinkles to accrue, but had otherwise cryogenically preserved himself; Caroline shook hands and ordered herself not to quail automatically at the mere thought of talking to him and working with him. Taylor Crane she recognised; she’d written a paper on the anomaly locking machine several years previously, and Caroline had enjoyed several months of slightly tetchy conversation over email as Caroline discovered exactly how obstructionist Don Briggs could be and Taylor discovered just how politely Caroline could stonewall her, before they’d actually met and discovered that they got along quite well. Claudia Brown – who had left the project long before Caroline had arrived, and who was now perched comfortably just below the top of the civil service ladder and considering a departure into the private sector soon – had turned up, but Jenny Lewis had made excuses not to be there, either because she genuinely was in Bhutan or because she didn’t want to spend time in the same room as her look-a-like, with whom she got on infamously badly. Sarah Page had arrived five minutes before, looking distinctly professorial and deeply tanned from recent excavations in Egypt, but apparently Danny Quinn had crashed his motorbike one too many times and broken his neck a few years previously. Even Nick Cutter was there, looking younger than his former protégés, but Caroline had already heard all about him from Don Briggs and managed to keep it together when she shook hands with him and congratulated him on his return. There were a lot of men round the table she didn’t actually know, but automatically registered as military. One, a battered Daniel Craig look-a-like with salt-and-pepper hair, she recognised as Jon Lyle, while another had featured in the obsessive coverage of Stephen Hart (former anomaly hero, gay icon and gold medal winner!) as his partner, Tom Ryan, one she didn’t know at all, and another was apparently married to Abby Maitland. At least, the twins had run up to them, jumping up and down and lisping adorably in nasal Australian accents, and there was a certain family resemblance.

 

            Caroline found it frankly overwhelming, and she still hadn’t confronted the worst part of the whole business.

 

            She stiffened her spine, and reluctantly allowed her eyes to fall on Connor Temple. She’d worried about meeting him, had actively avoided him on the few occasions when it seemed like their paths might cross, not wanting to know how he’d react to seeing the woman who had tricked him into an infatuation. But he seemed fine, rising to drag her into a hug with a good-natured smile and a few polite words. He’d cleaned up rather nicely over the years, too; he didn’t look any more sensible, but he looked slightly more grounded and a little less oddly dressed than he had been before.

 

            “Well, now we’re all here,” Lester said in tones of boredom, as Lorraine’s husband pulled out a chair for Caroline and the children were shepherded back out again by Juliet Sayers and a tall, lanky young man who had introduced himself as Jamie Burke-Lester, whose artwork Caroline was reasonably certain she’d seen in some pretty prestigious galleries.

 

            “Let’s get started,” Cutter said, rubbing his hands together and looking pleased with himself for existing – as well he might be, considering that just yesterday he’d been missing in action for the best part of two decades.

 

            Caroline settled in, taking a deep breath and reminding herself that she belonged here. She’d been working on the anomalies for years now, she was the one who’d been gathering evidence and proving they still existed, and she was the one who already had rough short-term contingency plans in place, in case more anomalies were reported – after eleven anomaly-free years, the ones the ARC had left behind were no longer current. She had a right to be here.

 

 

            An hour later, Caroline’s head hurt and a limited amount of progress had been made, but Lester treated her with more respect than he had before; she genuinely was very well prepared for this meeting, and for anomalies in general. Professor Cutter was just congratulating her on her readiness to confront the situation with a note of approval she’d never heard from anyone on the anomaly team before when the artist, Jamie, stuck his head around the door, expression uneasy.

 

            “Guys...”

 

            There was a slight spark from the electronic mess on the table and the clatter of Connor dropping a screwdriver and yelping; Caroline gave him a moment’s attention, and noticed that he was having little success fitting the replacement AAA batteries into his old anomaly detector, just to see if it still worked.

 

            “... has anyone seen Kit or Carys?” Jamie said, and Caroline’s head snapped back round.

 

            “No,” Abby’s husband said, and frowned. “Aren’t they out there with the other kids?”

 

            Lorraine and Niall shared a weary glance, and Niall got up, muttering something about climbing like a cat. Stephen and Ryan, Stephen’s partner – and presumably Kit’s parents – looked rather more worried.

 

            “Don’t worry, I’ll find them both,” Niall said grimly.

 

            Lorraine sighed. “Carys has probably been leading Kit astray. Is he at all adventurous?”

 

            “No,” Ryan said, speaking for both men. “Not even a bit.”

 

            “They’re _eight_ ,” Caroline said, confused, “how far can they possibly have gone?”

 

            “Carys climbed over our garden fence once,” Niall told her, with a faint note of pride in his voice. “Just to see if she could.”

 

            “She would have climbed back, too,” Lorraine said, “except that Mr MacGregor caught her in his garden.” She put her head in her hands. “She was _six_!”

 

            “Um,” Caroline said, and shared the appalled look of the inexperienced in the wiles of children with Cutter.

 

             “They’ve been gone fifteen minutes,” Jamie said. “Twenty at most.”

 

            “Ha!” Connor yelled, and screwed the casing back onto the anomaly detector, switched it on, thumped it against the table experimentally, and started twiddling the dial.

 

            “Shouldn’t you have returned that to the authorities?” Lester said, sounding as if this was all very tedious, and pulling his seat in so that Lyle could get up and join Niall, Liz, Jamie and the couple Caroline hadn’t recognised, who had introduced themselves as Claire and Dave.

 

            “Yeeeeeah,” Connor said absently, “but no. It’s my prototype, I patented it. Remember?”

 

            “Vividly,” Lorraine said.

 

            Connor grinned. “You got me those forms from the Patent Office, didn’t you? I remember. Look, here’s 87.6. I check this regularly, I never have any activity on it. See?” He passed the detector round so everyone could see the number on the screen, and hear the lack of anomaly-inspired blaring. The little group making plans behind Caroline moved off, apparently to search the hotel, and Caroline passed the detector back to Connor.

 

            “I don’t know how we’ll work out which frequency this one’s on,” Connor observed, sounding pleased with the challenge, and started playing with the dial again.

 

            “Do stop that and concentrate,” Lester said irritably, doubtless remembering the days before the project had had a detector of any kind, but was drowned out by the scream of the anomaly detector.

 

            “Shit,” Connor whispered, staring down at the detector; Caroline read his lips and nodded, feeling the blood cold in her veins. He showed her and Lorraine the screen of the detector, and Caroline’s eyes widened as she realised that the anomaly was within perhaps ten minutes’ walk.

 

            Lorraine got up hastily, knocking her chair over, and strode out of the room. Stephen and Ryan followed her in short order, and Caroline saw them collide with the returning search party.

 

            “There was an open window,” Niall shouted over the noise. “That’s as good as a fucking signpost to Carys! Why the fuck is that thing going?”

 

            “Anomaly!” Cutter shouted back.

 

            “Where are the other kids?” Abby called, and “Connor, turn it off!”

 

            Connor muted the detector.

 

            “Juliet’s teaching them to do handstands on the lawn,” Jamie said, heading for the front door, “I’ll just – go and get them.”  


            “Where’s Liz?” Lester demanded.

 

            “Gone out of the window after them,” Niall answered, and added as an afterthought “I gave her a knife, she said she already had something on her.”

 

            Lester rolled his eyes, and joined the parental exodus into the lobby as Jamie and Juliet herded the kids back inside.

 

             Caroline touched Lorraine’s arm. “I’m going to call Major Becker,” she said. “If something hasn’t already come through...” She saw fear flash in Lorraine’s eyes, and regretted her phrasing. “I mean, it’s not worth taking the risk.”

 

            Lorraine nodded. “Tell Abby to warn Connor.”

 

            Caroline wondered why she would need to tell Abby to warn Connor, and also if someone else could possibly do it because she still wasn’t sure Abby didn’t have a grudge against her. There had certainly been some odd looks flying down the table at her.

 

            Caroline retired into the conveniently-situated Ladies bathroom and took out her phone, scrolling down the contacts list until she reached the emergency number Don Briggs didn’t know she had. Well, better to seek forgiveness than ask permission, and – if Caroline was any judge – Don Briggs wouldn’t be in nominal charge of the anomaly project for long. It was only one of his numerous responsibilities, and Caroline would be surprised if he spent more than a day a year thinking about it, which had been a totally justified approach for the past decade. But when the press found out about the anomalies returning, they would also find out that Don Briggs had been paying no attention, and then... oh, then there would be hell to pay.

 

            Caroline smiled. She wasn’t what you might call _sorry_. She’d never liked Don Briggs very much.

 

            The phone stopped ringing, and Caroline heard Becker’s voice on the other end. He’d worked for the anomaly project right up until 2013, hampering his own career, and had been glad to give her his number and help her put together a few ideas, in case of emergency. “Hello? Who’s calling?”

 

            “Caroline Steel,” Caroline said. “There’s an anomaly in the Forest of Dean. Perhaps ten minutes from the Mitchells’ hotel. Two kids, about eight or so, are unaccounted for, and Liz Lester has gone off looking for them.”

 

            There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. “Fuck. Is she armed?”

 

            “A knife,” Caroline said. “Or two. I’m not sure.”

 

            “On my way.”

 

            “How long?”

 

            “An hour, tops.”

 

            She slipped out of the bathroom just in time for the missing boy – Kit, was it? – to stumble across the floor, trip over Abby’s twins and fall at her feet. She stumbled backwards, attention caught by the excited words spilling out of Lorraine’s daughter’s mouth, confirming the presence of an anomaly, and Ryan scooped the boy up. He was too thin and small for his age, Caroline noted absently, and gave him a smile which she didn’t think he registered.

 

            Abby had dragged her husband off to the side for an impassioned rant under her breath about swearing in front of the kids; tactfully, Caroline turned her eyes away, and saw that Lorraine had physically snatched her daughter out of Niall’s arms and was holding her almost crushingly tight, despite the child’s protests. Caroline did some more tactful turning away of eyes, and tried to decide who to speak to about Becker’s imminent arrival, since there was no _way_ she was getting between Abby and Joel at that precise moment. Lester had moved back into the dining area to call his daughter back, and Cutter probably wouldn’t know anything about whatever ancient history meant that Connor needed to be warned, and in any case Connor hadn’t seen him for fifteen years. Ryan and Stephen were entirely occupied with explaining matters to Kit.

 

            Caroline made her decision and headed for Lyle. “Can I have a word?”

 

            Lyle frowned as if surprised. “Of course.”

 

            Caroline stepped back through a door marked PRIVATE, remembering from her earlier visit that it only led to an office, and Lyle followed her. “I have some... contingency plans in place, and I called up a contact to set them going. Major Becker?”

 

            Lyle straightened slightly, and he nodded. There was a slightly wary look in his eyes. “I know him. Decent soldier. Go on.”

 

            “He says he’ll be here with some men in an hour at most,” Caroline said, slightly annoyed that he hadn’t immediately joined the dots and said something revealing that would have explained the whole Connor thing, “and I told Lorraine, and she said I should have Abby warn Connor... but Abby seems a little busy right now. I don’t think it should be me to tell Connor, whatever it is.” She read the knowledge of her previous interactions with Connor off Lyle’s face, and stared right back at him. “I don’t know him very well.”

 

            Lyle pursed his lips. “I’ll tell Stephen. Thanks for the warning.”

 

            Caroline nodded, and Lyle left without a backward glance. She bit her lip, then fished out a mirror and touched up her lipgloss, so as to give her a minute to glare at her own reflection and wish for a spot of appreciation. At some point they would take her seriously as someone who had worked with the anomalies – _all_ of them, not just Lester and Lorraine and Cutter, who was probably funny in the head anyway.

 

            She left the office, and walked straight into an adorable blonde girl who was at roughly thigh height. Caroline  - experiencing difficulty adjusting to lots of little people below her line of sight – apologised to her, discovered that her name was Flick, and fell into conversation with her parents. Dave and Claire seemed perfectly amiable, and she’d bet anything that Claire at least knew nothing about her history with Connor and the anomaly project, although Dave seemed to be hiding more behind that easygoing smile.

 

            They were in the middle of a pleasant chat about Claire’s work as a teacher and Caroline was gossiping happily about some of her least favourite colleagues in the Department of Education, when there was a shout from Connor. Caroline jumped out of her skin, and whirled to see what was going on; Kit almost bumped into her in his haste to get behind Ryan, and then Carys grabbed his hand and that of a little boy with floppy brown hair and a strong resemblance to Taylor and dragged them both behind a door.

 

             “ _What_!” Connor was yelling. “You did _what_? You invited _him_ here?”

 

            Stephen had recoiled slightly, but was holding his ground. “Connor, it had to be done-“

 

            “You!” Connor barked, his eyes falling on Caroline. She locked her knees and promised herself she wouldn’t fold as he came stalking over to her; he had a more impressive temper than she’d seen before, although his face looked more flushed with distress than fury. “ _You_ did this!”

 

            “Yes,” she said, crushing the quaver in her voice. “I didn’t have much of a choice. Missing kids, Connor? What would you have done?”

 

            “I wouldn’t have got _Becker_ in!”

 

            “How many contacts in the Army do you think I have, Connor?” Caroline snapped. “I knew Becker, I knew he’d worked on the project, so I got in touch and he agreed to help out, at the risk of both our jobs! I don’t know what your problem is, but stop it – you’re scaring the kids.”  


            That was a shot in the dark, but she saw Connor’s eyes fall to the children lurking behind the door, and his shoulders slumped. “F- Fudge. Sorry, kids. Sorry, Caroline. It’s nothing. I just –” He shook his head, and scrubbed a hand over his eyes.

 

            “Oh please, Connor,” Caroline said, as gently as she could. “The last person you have to apologise to for insensitivity is me.”

 

            Connor glanced at her, and his lips quirked. “There is that.”

 

            Tentatively, Cutter came over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, lad. Let’s go find a cup of tea. I don’t know about you, but...”

 

            “Yeah.” Connor gave him a fleeting smile with no feeling in it. “Could do with a cuppa.”

 

            They went off to find a kettle, and Caroline felt the atmosphere relax around her.

 

            Liz, who had been standing frozen in the door for the past two minutes as if trying to work out who to take down first, stuffed her hands into his pockets and whistled softly. “I missed a party.”

           

            “Shut up, Liz,” Lester said wearily.

 

***

 

            Becker arrived fifteen minutes earlier than he’d said he would. Caroline, warned by a text ten minutes previously, was waiting for him just outside the front door, accompanied by Lester and Lorraine, with Liz and Blade lurking in case a dinosaur should happen to leap out of the trees. Two black vehicles drew up, sending gravel everywhere, and Caroline reflected that – with the former anomaly team’s cars in the car park – there probably wasn’t much space for them. A small group of black-clad men poured out, already armed, and Becker jumped from the passenger seat of the car in the lead and made straight for the small welcoming party. Caroline had seen pictures of him from his ARC days, and suspected that he’d served as the local posh totty, but he was older and harder-faced now, with a little grey in his hair. Not unattractive, but Caroline had a lurking suspicion that he was gay.

 

            Becker saluted the small group; Caroline didn’t have to look round to know that Liz and Blade had faded subtly into the background. “Where’s the anomaly?”

 

            “Business-like as usual,   Major,” Lester commented, tone long-suffering, and handed over the detector, which – though muted – was still showing a strong symbol for the anomaly, ten minutes’ walk away. “You remember Liz, of course.”

 

            Liz faded back out of the background and Becker straightened and gave a curt nod. Liz did something very similar. Caroline paused for a moment to wonder why on earth saluting hadn’t happened, exactly what that gesture was meant to mean, and whether it had something to do with the fact that Liz was in civvies. Then she dismissed it all on the grounds that she didn’t understand the military mind and didn’t really care, and could just corner either Niall or Becker later and demand an explanation.

 

            Becker favoured Liz with a slight smile. “Captain Lester. We brought extra firepower.”

 

            Caroline hoped that that wasn’t an actual glint she could see in Liz’s eye, and also that she herself would not be among the people who were armed. “Captain Lester has also been out to the anomaly.”

 

            Becker raised his eyebrows.

 

            “I was looking for the kids, sir,” Liz said, in an explanatory tone. “In the end, they made it back without my help. There was nothing coming out of the anomaly, but I had a quick look, and it’s probably Cretaceous, got lots of toothy things in.”

 

            Becker turned and gave a few orders and the anomaly detector to a soldier standing close by, who saluted, gathered about half the group of men with a few shouts and sent them back to the second vehicle, which promptly took off in the direction of the anomaly. Caroline felt Lorraine stiffen beside her and patted her awkwardly on the arm. Carys was a bright enough kid to have run for the hills and dragged Kit with her when she realised what she was looking at, she was tall and strong for her age, and Caroline had overheard Lyle remarking that Liz had been just such a feisty little girl once, but she was still only eight years old.

 

            Lorraine shot her a glare roughly translatable as _I am being a professional; please do not make this harder for me_.

 

            “Personally I would have put her on a leash the moment I realised she could climb fences,” Caroline said frankly, making the men present look at her with surprise and (at least in Niall and Lester’s case) understanding, “but that’s not really feasible, is it?”

           

            Lorraine laughed somewhat reluctantly. “It was my daughter who – went for a walk,” she explained to Becker.

 

            Becker nodded thoughtfully. “It sounded like her,” he said, surprising Caroline, who hadn’t been aware that he knew the family that well. “Any attacks? Are the press on it?”  


            “No and no, to the best of our knowledge,” Lester said.

 

            “I’ve had a word with the local police,” Lorraine said, and her lips curled slightly in amusement. “They remembered us. They haven’t had any calls, but they’re asking people to stay off the streets.”

 

            “What’s the line if we do get press?” Becker said.

 

            Caroline had the unusual experience of everyone looking at her, expecting an explanation. “There is no line,” she said, “not right now. I’ve spoken to my boss, but he wants incontrovertible proof that anomalies are back.”

 

             Lester raised a supercilious eyebrow. “I should have thought Professor Cutter was fairly incontrovertible.”

 

           “So did Sir Donald,” Caroline said, remembering some of the rather ruder things Don Briggs had actually said about Cutter, “but he wanted proof that shows that there are new anomalies on a new frequency and this isn’t just a blip on the machine.” She pinched the bridge of her nose and thought. “Say you’re investigating reports of an anomaly, but whether it is an anomaly or only some teenagers playing tricks you don’t know, but you’re exercising extra caution because of the area’s history. That should cover it.”

 

            Becker nodded. “Very good, Miss Steel. Investigation of the anomaly itself?”

 

            Lester thinned his lips. “None, preferably.”

 

            “Unless people have gone through,” Caroline added quickly. “Then – do all that’s reasonable to bring them back. I’m sure I can arrange for a decontamination unit if necessary.”

 

            “Connor and Taylor want to measure the anomaly,” Lorraine volunteered, watching Becker carefully. “Apparently Connor keeps an arsenal of handy little scientific gadgets in his car.”

 

            Becker’s face went wooden, but he nodded again.

 

            “I’m sure they can drive themselves there,” Caroline said smoothly. “If there isn’t room in the jeep.”

 

            “Might not be,” Becker agreed colourlessly. “Got a lot of weaponry and people in there already.”

 

            Liz coughed. “I could drive them, sir. I know where it is, too.”

 

            “Good. Go and get your scientists, Captain, borrow a rifle from the jeep, and lead the way.”

 

            “Yessir,” Liz said, and disappeared.

 

            Becker’s radio crackled and he paused to press his headset into his ear.

 

            “I take it everything’s under control?” Lester enquired.

 

            Becker nodded. “Anomaly secured, no sign of anything having come out. On previous experience, sir, I’d say it looks like we’ll just have to wait this one out – but you never know, with anomalies.”

 

            “No,” Caroline said, surprising even herself. “You never do.” After all, they’d come back after twelve blessed anomaly-free years – or at least a blessed anomaly-free decade or so. Caroline dated the earliest indications of new anomalies that she knew of to 2019, and her boss had dismissed those as too tenuous to be true. Abruptly, she remembered Don Briggs and his demands for absolute proof. “Has one of the scientists got a camera with them?”

 

            “Temple almost certainly will,” Becker said, and Caroline blinked at the tone of his voice; carefully hidden under the professionalism was something partly wistful, partly affectionate, partly angry, and _totally_ incomprehensible.

 

            She really had to find out what had happened between Becker and Connor.

 

***

           

            Caroline had never seen an actual real live anomaly, and – unlike seemingly every child and adult at the hotel – she didn’t want to. She’d seen enough of the creatures in Leek’s bunker to know that any place they came from was a place she didn’t want to be, and the best way to achieve that was to be elsewhere when the anomalies opened. As a consequence, she’d never been any closer to an anomaly than the locking machine, which she’d seen quite frequently in her current job.

 

            _Very few_ people seemed to think this was a sensible stance.

 

            “You don’t understand, Caroline,” even Lorraine told her, a faint, yearning look on her face. “I mean – I only went through once, and I can’t say I especially wanted to; people simply kept telling me I could, and, well... it seemed like an unmissable opportunity. But it’s amazing, Caroline, simply stepping into the past like that. Absolutely unbelievable. And to breathe air that almost no other human being ever has, to see sites almost no-one ever will... _No you may not_ , Carys Joy Richards. You’re not big enough yet. And besides, I’m still not pleased with you, young lady; what have I told you about climbing out of windows without asking first?”

 

            Claudia shook her head and laughed a little as Lorraine firmly escorted her daughter away from the door and sat her down on a bench between her parents where she couldn’t get away. “That child is a little hell-raiser.”

 

            “She seems all right,” Caroline murmured dubiously. Carys appeared to have written Caroline off as a boring grownup almost from the moment she’d set eyes on her, so Caroline had never actually spoken to her beyond a few sentences – which explained why she’d barely recognised her when she saw her outside the hotel.

 

            “Pray you never have to babysit her,” Claudia said devoutly.

 

            “I don’t think Lorraine would ask me,” Caroline replied. “I’m not good with children.”

 

            Claudia just smiled. “I have a decontamination unit on standby, by the way.”

 

            “Thanks,” Caroline said. “I’d made plans, but... you know, there’s only so much I can do? When I started working on anomalies I committed career suicide.”

 

            “You did it because you thought it was important,” Claudia said, and shrugged. “Career suicide? Generally speaking, yes. But your bet’s paid off. When this comes out in the press, you’ll look like someone far-sighted and dedicated, protecting the UK from a threat no-one else saw coming. They’ll have to re-found the ARC, and who will be running it? Not Don Briggs. You’ve done yourself a major favour.”

 

            “I somehow don’t think they’ll be wanting me to run it,” Caroline said a little bitterly. The spying Leek had persuaded her to do kept coming back to bite her almost twenty years later, and the fact that she’d lost her job, was desperate not to get on benefits, had a seriously autistic brother to help support and had been a sitting duck for Leek’s promises never seemed to count for anything. Caroline sure as hell wasn’t going to regurgitate excuses to interview panels and colleagues – she had too much pride for that.

 

            “Really?” Claudia smiled enigmatically and tucked a strand of very cleverly dyed hair behind her ear. “I would put money on Lorraine to do the politics and you to run the everyday ARC. CEO, if you like.”

 

            Caroline almost choked, and was thrilled when her phone went in her handbag and she had an excuse to turn away from Claudia and scrabble for it. She pressed the green button without even checking who it was. “Caroline Steel speaking.”

 

            “Coming back from the anomaly now, ma’am,” Liz said. “It’s closed but Major Becker’s keeping a watch on it.”

 

            “Okay. See you in a minute.” Caroline ended the call, and tucked the phone back into her bag. “Liz is bringing the scientists back.”

 

            Claudia nodded.

 

            Caroline hesitated. “Is it just me, or is it – _weird_ seeing someone you last met as a teenager grown up?”

 

            Claudia snorted. “It’s not just you.”

 

 

            Caroline didn’t feel it was incumbent on her to meet the returning scientists and listen to Connor and Taylor technobabble; she went and made herself a cup of tea instead. Connor appeared in the doorway at the very moment that she was pouring the water, and she started and spilt boiling water over her hands. She swore, put the kettle down, and went to run her hand under the tap.

 

            “God, I’m sorry,” Connor said, coming in. He looked older and more tired than he had done when he’d left.

 

            “Not your fault,” Caroline said, judging the slight scald to be assuaged and turning off the tap. “Did you want a cup of tea?”

 

            “I was looking for coffee, actually.” He rummaged around in the cupboards and came up with a jar of instant coffee and even more dishevelled hair than usual.

 

            “Kettle’s boiled,” Caroline said rather uselessly. “Spare mugs are just there.

 

            “Thanks.”

 

            There was an awkward pause. “Good anomaly?”

 

            “Not bad, not bad.” Connor cleared his throat and bobbed his head, measuring out the coffee with obsessive carefulness. “Hoping to study more. It is a different frequency, but we don’t know if there are others on yet more frequencies, or if it’s just... sort of swapped over from 87.6. Magnetism was within the normal range, so far as I can recall. Becker wouldn’t let us go through.”

 

            Caroline leaned on the worktop and watched him. “Connor...”

 

            “Yes? What?” He sounded defensive.

 

            “Tell me honestly. Can you work with him?”

 

            Connor stopped moving, and Caroline wondered if she’d overstepped the mark. “Yeah,” he said eventually, drawing the sound out. “It wasn’t – you know. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. He was professional.”

 

            “Good,” Caroline said. “Connor, you know if I’d known you had a problem with him and if I’d had any other choice, I wouldn’t have called him, but...”

 

            “Yeah. I know.” Connor half-smiled, but not as if he was actually pleased or happy. “No, it was all right.”

 

            “Well. Good, then.” Caroline stood there awkwardly, fingering one of her earrings for lack of anything to do. She’d apologised for the Leek debacle a long time ago, although she was still doing penance for it in her head and didn’t think she would forgive herself for a good long while.

 

            “Yeah.”

 

            Cutter pushed open the door. “Caroline,” he said, and gave her a brief smile, then turned a much brighter one on Connor. “Connor, where’s the data for the anomaly? Taylor says you’ve got it and she refuses to walk me through it without you there, says I’ll ask too many questions. Bloody cheek, I tell you!”

 

            “I know, I know,” Connor grinned, “insolence of the younger generation, whatever. Come on, old man, let’s see if we can get this through your geriatric brain.”

 

            Cutter gave a strangely Scottish and offended squawk, and they left, taking the piss out of each other and leaving Connor’s coffee languishing on the side. Caroline stared at it, and finally smiled.

 

            She didn’t know Connor well at all. But she reckoned that if he had someone who could make him light up like that when he was feeling down and depressed, he was going to be absolutely fine.


End file.
